Short answer first. Ask what IELTS score a university requires and the honest answer from our own program records is one number with a long shadow: the median requirement is 6.5 at every degree level. Of the 940 program records behind this site's search, 857 state an IELTS minimum, and the level you apply to changes the shape of the distribution far more than it changes the middle.
The requirements, by level
| Degree level | Programs stating an IELTS minimum | At 6.0 or below | At exactly 6.5 | At 7.0 or above | Lowest stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's | 319 | 114 (36%) | 129 (40%) | 76 (24%) | 4.5 |
| Master's | 434 | 61 (14%) | 238 (55%) | 135 (31%) | 4.5 |
| PhD | 104 | 15 (14%) | 51 (49%) | 38 (37%) | 6.0 |
The differences live in the tails. Bachelor's programs carry the low end: 21 of them state a minimum of 5.5 or below, and over a third sit at 6.0 or below. PhD programs have a hard floor instead: not one of the 104 states a minimum below 6.0, and 37 percent ask for 7.0 or more. Master's, the biggest group, is the tightest around the standard: 55 percent ask for exactly 6.5. The exam hub pages this article follows, like Leverage Edu's IELTS guide, list dates and fees; the requirement itself is a distribution, and this is ours, counted rather than sampled.
The second minimum: the per-band floor
Every figure above is the overall score. Nearly half the records, 445 of them, also state a per-band floor, the no-section-below number that rejects applicants who clear the headline. The floor's own shape is lower and tighter: 6.0 is the most common floor (176 records), then 5.5 (127). And the relationship between the two numbers is remarkably regular: of 441 programs stating both, the floor sits exactly half a band below the overall in 299 of them, a full band below in 77, and equal to the headline in only 62. Planning to the overall alone is how a 6.5 with a 5.5 in writing gets screened out; our 6.5 with no band below 6.0 guide works that exact case, and the UK band explainer covers the floor by country.
Sources: hub format modeled on Leverage Edu, IELTS Exam 2027: Dates, Syllabus & Fees. All counts from this site's own program records (940 records harvested from its public search index, November 5, 2026; three records carry a per-band value that is not a readable band and are excluded from the floor counts).